Same 19-item basket, sized for a family of two adults and two 7-year-olds, priced at Kaufland in Germany, Czechia, Slovakia, Poland, Croatia, Bulgaria and Romania — then checked against what families in each country actually take home.
Standard, private-label-grade goods — the kind stocked in every Kaufland regardless of market — sized for one week of meals for a family of four.
Kaufland only runs a public, priced online catalogue in Germany (kaufland.de) and Slovakia/Poland (marketplace, shipped goods — not representative of in-store shelf prices). For most markets Kaufland does not publish a browsable shelf-price list, so item-by-item matching across all 7 countries isn't possible from public sources.
This means: absolute basket costs for DE/CZ/SK/RO rest on official price-level data; PL/HR/BG are best-effort estimates. All are anchored to real, sourced Kaufland Germany prices — not a guess pulled from thin air.
Weekly basket cost, converted to EUR at approximate August 2026 exchange rates.
| Rank | Country | Basket — local currency | Basket — EUR | vs. Germany | Source basis |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 🇩🇪 Germany | €56.22 | €56.22 | — | Real Kaufland prices |
| 2 | 🇨🇿 Czechia | ≈1,208 Kč | €49.31 | −12% | Eurostat PLI 2025 |
| 3 | 🇸🇰 Slovakia | €45.57 | €45.57 | −19% | Eurostat PLI 2025 |
| 4 | 🇷🇴 Romania | ≈223 lei | €43.92 | −22% | Eurostat PLI 2025 |
| 5 | 🇭🇷 Croatia | €41.89 | €41.89 | −25% | Indicative estimate |
| 6 | 🇧🇬 Bulgaria | €39.53 | €39.53 | −30% | Indicative estimate |
| 7 | 🇵🇱 Poland | ≈166 zł | €39.03 | −31% | Indicative estimate |
Family net income assumes two working adults, each earning the country's average net monthly salary (2025/26 data). Real household income varies with employment status, benefits and number of earners — treat this as a benchmark, not a survey.
Romania has the cheapest basket in cash terms among the euro-converted figures except Poland/Bulgaria — but the lowest income too. One week of groceries eats almost 2% of a Romanian family's entire monthly take-home pay, nearly double Germany's burden, even though the German basket costs 28% more in euros.
By sticker price: Germany is priciest (€56.22/week), Poland cheapest (€39.03/week) — a 44% spread.
By what it costs a family relatively: Romania is the toughest place to fill this basket (1.99% of monthly income), Germany the easiest (1.06%) — despite Germany's basket costing the most in absolute euros.
The gap exists because food-price levels converge across the EU far faster than wages do: Germany's food prices are only ~28% above Romania's, but German net income is roughly 2.4x higher.